> First, I humbly recommend you stop accusing others of being "programmed" in negative ways. It's presumptuious and makes me wonder if you're asking in good faith. Second, I would not end comments with "what the fuck happened" as it sounds condescending, as if you're on the "good side" looking down on the others and shaking your head.
I'm observing a noticeable societal shift that I have directly experienced occurring within my lifetime, and I have a hard time believing that this shift is wholly organic. like I said elsewhere in the thread, this demoralization and disintegration of innately self-evident core values like "working hard to make a good thing good is good" is exactly how I would poison the well of an adversarial nation that I wanted to destabilize at the foundational level.
it's quite nice to see some pushback against this.
> What I think isn't great is being commanded to be "hardcore" and work at "high intensity for long hours."
> Jobs with that level of intensity are fine if the rewards are there. That's been my life for a while, working on an indie game. I don't think that's the case for Twitter.
I'm confused. you're an indie game developer, and I don't know the details of your team and project, but that entire field is basically built on hard work, long hours, high-intensity effort, and yet you find it fulfilling, despite the great personal risk usually associated, especially being indie.
so why do you think it's impossible that someone else would find a job of this level of intensity but cranked up a notch, but compensated for with a large salary and lavish benefits, to be a compelling job prospect? like I'm with you, that proposition doesn't sound like a great personal fit for me, either—but why is it unthinkable that anyone would find the job compelling? you know as well as I do that, on some level, the entire video game development industry "preys on" developers' love of the medium and feeling of satisfaction caused by creating something cool after oftentimes plural years of development before having a concrete product to show for all the work you put into it. why is that OK for the video game industry, but not for social media companies?
> I also think it's a raw deal for a boss to walk in one day and completely flip the expectations.
I can see this, but also, how long was the Musk buyout deal in the works? how many months? of course, all the while, almost literally everyone on HN told themselves and everyone else, over and over again in comments threads, the deal will never happen, there's no way it'll go through, ahaha look at this new roadblock that came up, Elon will never get past this one! (seriously, go back in the archives and take a look at some of those threads, the self-assured self-righteous agreement that the deal would never happen is pretty crazy to look back on now.)
any Twitter employee who was ideologically opposed to Elon Musk had plenty of time to look for another job in the case that he actually completed the buyout. of course I'm sympathetic to anyone suddenly losing their job, to some extent, but this sympathy is balanced out somewhat by vindication at seeing bloated "tech companies" finally getting some fat trimmed such that someone who works at a company like Twitter—making much more money than I do at my job—actually has to work hard to earn the paycheck and benefits they enjoy.
> Elon will never get past this one! (seriously, go back in the archives and take a look at some of those threads, the self-assured self-righteous agreement that the deal would never happen is pretty crazy to look back on now.)
I mean... he literally tried to weasel his way out of the purchase agreement until it became clear that the courts weren't going to let that happen? I'm not sure this is the dunk you seem to think it is.
is it not interesting when hundreds of people are absolutely convinced that something is impossible, and then it happens anyway? is that not cause for reflection and introspection, to figure out how so many people could be wrong about something? is that not just standard operating procedure for anyone who makes any sort of prediction/assertion that turns out to be inaccurate, in order to assess things more accurately in the future?
I guess we just remember things differently. For sure there was a lot of disbelief around the internet when Elon made his original offer because who in their right mind would pay that much money for Twitter? But once it became clear that the money was there it was also clear that Twitter's board had a fiduciary duty to accept. At that point the only obstacle was Musk himself, presumably having realized that he had handcuffed himself to a questionable business deal in a fit of pique. Cue the months of hemming and hawing, lawyering etc. until finally Musk knew there was no way out.
that is indeed more or less the story as it was told here, Statler & Waldorf-style, laughing at and ridiculing the dumb billionaire for making every possible decision as completely and utterly incorrectly as possible, every step of the way… but built into that story is a lot of assumptions about motivations and expectations that we simply are not privy to no matter how much we pretend otherwise. also the story changed halfway through from "there's no way he's ever going to be able to buy it" to "ahahaha now he's so fucked he HAS to buy it!". all of this was very emotion-driven and sensationalized, in ways that many people, myself included, assessed as being less and less reality-based as time went on, in ways that curiously mirrored other formally similar incidents from previous years.
again, taking a step back and reflecting on things can lead to the discovery of such patterns repeated across recent history, which leads to key insights about how and why these overemotional public melodramas play out the way they do.
> disintegration of innately self-evident core values like "working hard to make a good thing good is good"
Working hard is necessary to make something good, of course. Working "hardcore", where 100-hour weeks are _required_, and only "exceptional" performance is acceptable, is _inhuman_.
I'm saying this as someone who's managed several teams over several years, but also someone who's read the literature: the surest way to get bad performance out of someone is to put that kind of pressure on them, _especially_ long-term. People in that situation get tired and/or sick, can't straight from the anxiety and pressure, and because of all of that that they'll make simple mistakes that take a long time to sort out (because everybody else is in the same situation).
In my experience the best work comes from people who are calm, healthy, and well-rested, _especially_ over the long term. Those well-rested people are the ones who are capable of putting in the discretionary effort to make something good.
> Working "hardcore", where 100-hour weeks are _required_, and only "exceptional" performance is acceptable, is _inhuman_.
this is something you and everyone else read into the email that was simply not written there. out of curiosity, what drives you to take "hardcore" and "this will mean working long hours" just about as exaggeratedly, hyperbolically uncharitably possible? I can't find a valid logical reason for doing this, yet everyone seems to be doing it, and I can't figure it out.
This is literally what Musk did first thing when he stepped into Twitter premises. He told teams to ship a feature in a short timespan or be fired, which required them to work over the weekends and sleep at their desk.
I'm observing a noticeable societal shift that I have directly experienced occurring within my lifetime, and I have a hard time believing that this shift is wholly organic. like I said elsewhere in the thread, this demoralization and disintegration of innately self-evident core values like "working hard to make a good thing good is good" is exactly how I would poison the well of an adversarial nation that I wanted to destabilize at the foundational level.
it's quite nice to see some pushback against this.
> What I think isn't great is being commanded to be "hardcore" and work at "high intensity for long hours."
> Jobs with that level of intensity are fine if the rewards are there. That's been my life for a while, working on an indie game. I don't think that's the case for Twitter.
I'm confused. you're an indie game developer, and I don't know the details of your team and project, but that entire field is basically built on hard work, long hours, high-intensity effort, and yet you find it fulfilling, despite the great personal risk usually associated, especially being indie.
so why do you think it's impossible that someone else would find a job of this level of intensity but cranked up a notch, but compensated for with a large salary and lavish benefits, to be a compelling job prospect? like I'm with you, that proposition doesn't sound like a great personal fit for me, either—but why is it unthinkable that anyone would find the job compelling? you know as well as I do that, on some level, the entire video game development industry "preys on" developers' love of the medium and feeling of satisfaction caused by creating something cool after oftentimes plural years of development before having a concrete product to show for all the work you put into it. why is that OK for the video game industry, but not for social media companies?
> I also think it's a raw deal for a boss to walk in one day and completely flip the expectations.
I can see this, but also, how long was the Musk buyout deal in the works? how many months? of course, all the while, almost literally everyone on HN told themselves and everyone else, over and over again in comments threads, the deal will never happen, there's no way it'll go through, ahaha look at this new roadblock that came up, Elon will never get past this one! (seriously, go back in the archives and take a look at some of those threads, the self-assured self-righteous agreement that the deal would never happen is pretty crazy to look back on now.)
any Twitter employee who was ideologically opposed to Elon Musk had plenty of time to look for another job in the case that he actually completed the buyout. of course I'm sympathetic to anyone suddenly losing their job, to some extent, but this sympathy is balanced out somewhat by vindication at seeing bloated "tech companies" finally getting some fat trimmed such that someone who works at a company like Twitter—making much more money than I do at my job—actually has to work hard to earn the paycheck and benefits they enjoy.